Summary

Booklist Review

New voices in our national conversation on race . . . In Whiteness of a Different Color [BKL O 1 98], Yale historian Matthew Jacobson traced how various European "races" were gradually, after decades in the U.S., recognized as "white." In How Jews Became White Folks, UCLA anthropologist Brodkin explores a similar transition: "the institutionalized practices . . . that assigned [Jews] first to the not-white side of the American racial binary, and then to its white side." Her interdisciplinary approach includes reflections on the experiences of three generations of Brodkin's own family. She concludes that the nation's "core constitutive myth" limits citizenship to white men and women; all "others" are required to "whiten themselves or . . . be consigned to an animal-like, ungendered underclass." Despite continuing changes in the nation's "ethnoracial map," Brodkin notes, the "binary of black and white . . . is distressingly stable." Demanding but valuable analysis. "We need to explore racial manners," poet and writer Jacobs argues, "because the alternative is to dodge racial shrapnel." In his introduction, "Fear of Frankness," he suggests that "race has become so toxic a topic in America that many of us are afraid to even touch it, at least in public." Jacobs discusses more than a dozen areas of confrontation, from transit and taxicabs to O.J. and Elvis and affirmative action. "Elvis Has not Left the Building" may be typical of Jacobs' approach. In the essay, Jacobs urges blacks and whites to agree on two facts: that Presley very profitably repackaged black music for a white audience, and that Elvis was a great artist. A thoughtful, often entertaining challenge to stereotypical thinking on both sides of the nation's racial divide. --Mary Carroll

Publisher's Weekly Review

In a frank, intelligent guide intended for both whites and blacks, Jacobs explores the resentments that thwart a genuine dialogue on race. He lays bare the "wildly, even hysterically" exaggerated fear of African-American males held by many whites, and he urges white people to recognize that a racial double standard exists in law enforcement. Jacobs, a poet and essayist, describes how, as an African-American, he grew up surrounded by racial hatred in predominantly white, middle-class Rochester, N.Y. Nevertheless, he cautions that many blacks have succumbed to a siege mentality, judging all whites as harshly and as broadly as they feel themselves to be judged. While supporting affirmative action, he acknowledges that this policy comes with a price involving sacrifice by some whites for the greater good. He urges blacks to gain as much competence as possible in Standard English, while at the same time deploring the negative attitude many whites harbor toward speakers of vernacular "black English." Whether he is discussing interracial love, ethnic jokes, African-American TV shows or Elvis Presley's borrowings from black music, Jacobs challenges preconceptions and entrenched myths. Agent, Sheree Bykofsky. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

School Library Journal Review

YA-Defining manners as "consideration reached through interchange," Jacobs provides an accessible and inspiring response to the contemporary American climate of grievances and attempts at public dialogue about race. Sorting his discussion into such practical venues of public and social life as maneuvering through the streets, analyzing the dating patterns of strangers, telling ethnic jokes, and shopping at the local supermarket, the author consistently reminds both black and white readers that stereotyping is harmful to the stereotyper as well as to the stereotyped; that history informs attitudes; and that cultural change comes through interpersonal exchange, argument and consideration, not through ignorance, fear of speaking up, or failure to listen. Students, teachers, and others who care about where we are heading-and where we have been-as a culture and as a political state-need to read this book. And, having read it, they will want to talk about it; expand upon it; and consider the ideas, fears, and hopes for further interchange that it elicits.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.